Lunar governance should be multilateral

The NASA Apollo 8 mission to the moon captured the iconic earthrise image the same year in which U.S. forces were responsible for the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Similarly, on April 6, as the crew of the NASA Artemis II mission swung around the moon in their spacecraft, they photographed the earth rising above the lunar limb — an earthset — only months after the first casualty of coordinated strikes by the U.S. and Israel against Iran was a girls’ primary school. The Refugees International president called it “likely the largest number of child casualties in a single U.S. military attack” since My Lai.

In Washington, the administration was simultaneously dismantling legal protections for immigrants, imposing tariffs which fall afoul of trade law, and enabling an Israeli military campaign in Gaza that the International Court of Justice has been scrutinising for genocide since January 2024. Thus, the country that asks the world to celebrate humankind’s return to the moon has demonstrated a simultaneous contempt for human rights and international law.